About Colchester Institute
With an annual turnover of approximately £45 million Colchester Institute is one of the largest providers of its kind in the area delivering a wide range of full and part-time vocationally orientated programmes, to both FE and HE Learners.
The purpose of the College is to meet the needs of customers through effective learning, teaching and development of skills.
Our vision is to be a College that is EXCEPTIONAL, EXCITING and VOCATIONAL. We have developed a series of outcomes and expectations required of all our staff to ensure that we meet this vision.
With approximately 1150 staff the College is one of the largest employers in the area. There are approximately 370 lecturing staff and over 300 teaching support and business support staff. A large number of hourly paid teaching and learning support staff are also employed.
About 14,000 students are enrolled each year, with approximately 5500 on full-time courses. The majority of students are local but many are attracted from further afield, including overseas.
Further education courses account for approximately 80% of the provision of the College. A range of well-established degree and higher education courses are also available, including new courses at foundation degree level.
Responding to a range of government initiatives the College has also been successful in introducing a variety of short programmes to meet specific local and national skills shortages.
An expanding range of short courses, tailored to meet the needs of the business community, are also provided by the Professional Training Centre.
The main campus is situated on the edge of Colchester town within easy walking distance of the town centre and mainline railway station. It is a large, open campus consisting of purpose-built accommodation including an extensive range of specialist facilities to support our educational programmes, such as two large halls with stages, drama studio, gymnasium and access to nearby sports fields. A new construction and engineering wing was opened in 2009.In addition there are facilities open to the public including first-class training restaurants and hairdressing and beauty therapy salons.
The Colchester School of Art, Design and Media took residency of the historic Minories building in Colchester town centre in May 2008. This historic building is well known locally as being associated with the arts community and we intend to extend this through our exhibitions and Art and Design Postgraduate studies.
Colchester Institute is keen to meet the more localised needs of its customers and ‘to take learning to the learners’. To support this aim the College merged with Braintree College in January 2010. Based at its existing sites in Braintree and Witham The College at Braintree offers a variety of vocationally based FE courses and qualifications in areas such as art and design, beauty therapy, business, computer studies, construction, health & childcare, media, motorcycle and motor vehicle mechanics, music technology, performing arts, sports and recreation and travel and tourism.
The College at Clacton operates from two sites in Clacton. Responding to the needs of the local community, the main focus of provision at these sites is on vocational training, such as administration and IT, hairdressing, beauty therapy and construction.
The Learning Shop in Dovercourt and the Learning Centre in Colchester provide additional town centre locations for computer training and learndirect access.
Further information about Colchester Institute is available in our latest Annual Review.
